Friday, July 28, 2017

The Sonnenrad

Earlier we took a look at the fylfot (swastika) and its connection to, and meaning for, Yule and the New Year. While there is much that can be expanded on therein, it is basic to note that the fylfot is connected integrally to fire, creation, rebirth, the return out of darkness, and specifically connected with Freyr, Odin and Thor. We also uncovered the connections of Freyr and the swastika to the greater Indo-European stream of knowledge, with his proper name Ingwi being of the same origin as the Indo-Aryan Agni, and likewise Thor being Thur-Agni or Thuragna among the Asuras. And subsequently, the mythology of the breath of life being blown into Ask and Embla, or Mashya and Mashyana, and the gift of Vayu-Wotan to the children of the Sun - the Urfyr, or Fa. The rune Fa, doubled and inverted upon itself, forms Gibor, the concealed swastika, and thus the fire-whisk, or creation.

Now we take a look at an even more mysterious symbol of the Runic paths, one which may be thought of as the fylfot's completion and ascendance. Like the fylfot, this symbol has long been honored by the noble, shunned by the ignoble, suppressed by the herder, and despised by the sheep. Like the fylfot, there is much disinformation being spewed about it, insomuch as it is mentioned at all outside of Runic circles.

We are, of course, speaking of the Black Sun. Or more specifically, its Germanic form, as the Sonnenrad (sun-wheel) or Schwarz-Sonne. For there are similar symbols in the Slavic and Scythian traditions as well, though not all of the same esoteric meanings carry over.

What is this mysterious, mesmerizing, and (some would say) fearsome symbol?

We have two streams of information on this ancient holy sign. The first is the ancient lore, some archaeological, some esoteric, passed down through "Armanist" or "Irminist" family traditions over the centuries. The second is purely modern, tying into Wewelsburg castle, the spiritualists of the Third Reich, and the more clandestine circles of the Vril and Edda societies, as well as postwar mystics who resumed their quest for power beyond the purely earthly, viewing runes and solar symbols as wisdom of alien origin, and the first Aryans as a not-quite-earthly people, whose culture influenced all ancient civilizations from Greece to Babylon to Tibet. In some ways these two currents of knowledge are in stark contrast with each other. One cannot truly say that everything the more traditional Armanist/Irminist clans believed about the Black Sun has anything in common with what people like Karl von Sebottendorf, Maria Orsic, Miguel Serrano or the UFO chasers understood from it (and even these did not share one unified view on the greater Indo-European cosmology of which it is such a major part). So the meanings of it have to be viewed through as initiatory a lens as possible.

We are not saying it is an alien symbol from a cosmic race in the Aldebaran system, though that doesn't mean it can't be. We are also not saying that it is a direct revealed message from Odin in the earliest times of the Ur-Aryan tribes - though that doesn't mean it can't be. More important than any such assertions by convinced adepts of either path, is the esoteric meanings of this symbol, in which there is significant overlap between the Armanic traditionalists and the Vril-Babylon modernists, regardless of whatever else they may disagree on.

The Armanist Narrative

The true origin of the Black Sun symbol, in the archaeological record, is likely to be some time before the Migration Age (1st millennium BCE) in Eurasia, as we know that the Alamanni, Goths and other Germanic tribes with both a western and and eastern presence at the time, made bronze brooches with a similar sunwheel design. These ornamental disks, or Ziercheiben, were found in Alemannic women's graves in Germany. The significance of these symbols in women's graves of the period is not lost on people who understand one of the Sonnenrad's major meanings: the Black Sun is in one sense a womb, the mother of all things, the darkness from which creation emerges. In a theosophical sense (and here we speak of "theosophy" in a general vein as the synthesis of science and spirituality, not as the movements founded by Blavatsky, Gurdjeff, etc.), the Black Sun symbolizes the gigantic Black Hole at our galaxy's center, which is indeed the mother of the galaxy, for by its gravity waves and magnetic waves spinning the gas into a spiral, it triggers eddies of star formation, literally birthing entire systems. Yet there is also a chaotic and destructive side to the Black Sun, as getting too close (literally, too oft attached) can result in being torn apart. This understanding of the primal feminine energy was integral to the Cult of Nerthus, for much as this primal Goddess of the Depths gives, she also takes away.

This however was not the only meaning of the Black Sun, nor perhaps even the foremost. Nor was it considered a symbol of femininity in an overt sense, as lunar symbols sometimes were in the Nordic-Slavic centers in Kievan Rus, but in this aspect, more of a primal energy of the creative mother which is a sort of supernatural archetype of vitality for women to seek out. Yet because it is also a solar symbol, and thus a manifestation of primal fire (Fa), it also has a strong masculine creative aspect of which the female wearers of these brooches were also aware. For it is Odin's fire-whisk and Thor's thunder-cross manifested threefold. A man embodying both the Odinic (commanding and beguiling) and Thoric (purely dominant) essences was their ideal man, the ideal singularity of strength around which the Black Sun can rotate. This is a fundamental truth of traditional societies, and of genetics.

The sun-wheel itself has been represented in many different forms throughout the Indo-European experience. One thing that can be agreed on, is that many ancient cultures began as solar cultures before later incorporating lunar and planetary symbols into their lore. The Sonnenrad can therefore be seen as a primal manifestation of solar symbols stretching back into the prehistory of the Aryan mind. We know that some of the earliest Middle Eastern societies to build lasting monuments, such as the Sumerians and the Egyptians, began as sun-tracking cultures under the influence of southern Aryan tribes from Aratta, Urartu, and Dilmun, which contrary to mainstream scholarship, was not in Arabia but rather in northern Iran on the Caspian Sea, which kept the name Deylaman into medieval times. (Notice something about these terms: Aratta, Urartu, Dilmun. How do they carry over into other IE languages? Ar-Ata, Ur-Ar-Tu, Dey-La-Man in Iranian languages. In proto-Germanic, Ar-Asa, Ur-Ar-Tiw, Dag-Laf-Man.) These are all runic names! These are all primal Aryan runic epigrams, easily convertible into Armanen runes. They are also the oldest known civilizations in the "Middle East", predating the literacy and agriculture of Mesopotamia's semitic cultures by at least two millennia.

In fact, one does not even need to be a convinced Armanist, let alone Ariosophist, to understand that these ancient Aryan kingdoms taught the Mesopotamians of Sumer, Akkad, Asshur, and Bab-Ilu literally all they knew of maths, science, farming, astronomy, medicine, building, metallurgy, and time. We know this because the mythology of the semites says so, in fairly explicit terms. These seemingly divine teachers of knowledge, the Mesopotamians called Abgallu, literally "water-men" or "fish-men", describing them as gods in human form, covered in fish-like scales and pointed helmets like the head of a fish, riding on the backs of gigantic sea serpents down the rivers of Abzu (water-rush), most likely the Arvand-Rud. It is the longest river in western Iran, and fits with the description of the fundamentally agricultural and metallurgic mastery of the Dilmuni people. The mainstream view of Dilmun being located in Bahrain (coastal Arabia) is clearly false, as Bahrain was historically a cluster of coastal sandy islands with no rivers, no mountain springs that could produce rivers, and no fertile soil for agriculture to speak of. Bahrain at the time produced only stone-age herdsmen, not technologically advanced farmers and builders. The mainstream view serves to obscure reality.

While pop-conspiracy crackpots such as Zechariah Sitchin spread wild rumors that the serpents refer to alien UFOs and "reptilians" from "Nibiru" trying to enslave humanity, there is a far simpler and more solid explanation of far more worth to the Runenmeister: The Abgallu were not aliens, not "nephilim", not reptiles - they were proto-Aryans, the historical "Atlanteans". The fish scales were not literal scales, but scale-mail armor, which is referenced in the ancient tales of Persian epics going back millennia before Greece and Rome. The fish-heads were not literal fish-heads, but ornamented conical helmets, the spangenhelm, which were a common feature of Iranian, Slavic, and Germanic tribes in the Bronze Age, with the Greeks referring to them as "barbarian helmets". The serpents on which they rode, were advanced boats similar to Scythian river vessels, and the ancient forerunners of Viking ships. It is interesting that mainstream history expects us to believe that the Viking longboat seemingly appears out of nowhere in the 7th century, whereas Armanism takes the view that all Germanic technologies evolved out of an earlier pan-Indo-European cultural heritage. Perhaps loons like Sitchin spread disinformation regarding the true origin of the Abgallu for their own interests, to further inter-ethnic fragmentation and weaken any awareness of a greater ancient connection between north and south Arya. Weak attempt, Zechariah. We know the tactics of your ilk.

Migrations of southern Aryan branch. The Abgallu were the western migration into Ubaid

As the legend goes, the Abgallu rowed down the Abzu (Arvand-Rud) to the region of Ubaid (now known as Sumeria), swiftly dazzling all who saw their shining scales, their serpent-like ships, their seemingly otherworldly technology, and their (sometimes) golden hair. We know of course that in Iran and Anatolia, they clearly didn't all have the same hair color (even among Swedes there are plenty of brunettes), but golden hair was unheard of among Sumer and Akkad, so they chose to emphasize this trait in their accounts of these advanced strangers. Note that the fish and the fish head below are highly stylized, indeed even the gill slits form the triple horns on either size of the crowns worn by Babylonian gods.

Among the earliest symbols that came with the Abgallu to Mesopotamia was the sun-wheel, and this was represented among the Assyrians and Akkadians as a solar cross. In fact, this equilateral cross was thousands of years older than Christianity or crucifixion, and represents the real origin of the equilateral crosses of Europe; for as the Abgallu took the solar Aryan symbols south, so did their kin north of the Caucasus take them north. The Assyrian sun cross is in appearance no different from the Germanic knight's cross, which was also a brooch emblem dating back thousands of years. Critically, in both contexts the message is the same; this is a solar symbol of divine kingship, not a torture device. In Assyrian carvings it is almost always shown above the head of a king. In Germanic brooches, it is found in the graves of kings. Though not the Sonnenrad, it represents a related aspect of the solar powers, namely the resplendent aura (Farr) of divine favor, bestowed by Freyr/Fravar/Faravahar upon the worthy kings. The natives of Mesopotamia knew nothing of these symbols until the Abgallu ruled over them as kings wearing these symbols, but later as the races mingled somewhat in the late Bronze Age, they wholeheartedly accepted these solar symbols as their own.

Thus as its various forms, the sunwheel embodies various meanings. As the fylfot, the fire-whisk, which ancient Persians called Gardune-Mehr or "cyclone of light", it is a symbol of unconquerable power and triumph over circumstance, with the breath of Vayu-Vata making man of a higher order than the mere instinctive beast. As the solar cross or knight's cross, it is the embodiment of divine favor and holy kingship, something that was stamped on everything royal to legitimize a dynasty in nearly every people influenced by Aryan culture, from the Anglo-Saxons to the Achamenids.

The Sonnenrad itself is more mysterious. It has twelve arms or branches, each of which resembles a Sig-rune. So this could be taken as a sign of victory. The 12th rune of the Armanen system, which is the rune row culturally most attuned to the same tradition as the Black Sun, is however not Sig, but the following rune, Tyr. Hence, Sig is repeated Tyr number of times. Twelve victories is symbolic of Tyr, of literally God-like status.

Its importance may also be tied to the seasons. There are twelve months to a solar year, and four seasons, three months in each. The Sonnenrad can be said to compose three swastikas of various tilt, with four arms to each, hence twelve. As representing the turning of the seasons, this is an obvious connection.

The Black Sun as a calendar, with the 12 original solar months of the Teutonic year, as named by Guido von List in The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Folk, Esoteric and Exoteric.

However, we come back to the question of the Black Sun in its mystical significance: why black? And is it literally black, or simply "hidden"?

In the German rune traditions, the notion of the Black Sun was more oral than written. Even today there is precious little information about it, and most of what one does find is extreme postwar Allied propaganda about some supposed top-secret SS ritual in Wewelsburg castle with Himmler presiding over the obligatory Hollywood blood sacrifice/satanic mass/[insert favorite paranoid zionist fantasy here]. In reality, the original Black Sun - the ancient Germanic symbol - is far more elegant than the hype, and has a mystical aspect little revealed outside the Armanist/Irminist circles of Germany and Austria. The Schwarze Sonne's true origins are hidden in the mists of time, much like the origins of the Runes and indeed the Odinic Journey itself. This fact is generally not disputed by people with a real interest in Indo-European cultures who delve deeper into the past. The symbol's history is far older and deeper than the brief period from 1933 to 1945. Here are a few basic insights.

There are, to put it simply, different kinds of light. Of course in science we understand this all too well: visible light in white or yellow wavelengths wakes us up, whereas gamma rays will destroy tissue and in large amounts kill you. In a metaphysical sense, light also is of different forms. Much like the visible sun - the "white" or "yellow" sun we see - illuminates the earth, the eyes, the physical world; so does the black sun or the invisible sun illuminate the mind of man.

Much as visible light guides the steps in Midgard, the invisible energy of this Dark Sun guides the inner work of the enabling of the Runenmeister towards excellence in all focused actions. Habit is modified by ritual. Ritual is guided by Immanence (if it is sincere ritual felt in the bones and blood, rather than a mere repetitive tradition handed down by rote). Immanence has a source.

The ultimate source of Immanence, creative fury, and Will to Power, is the void from which Being emerges, and into which Non-Being is annihilated - the Black Hole, the Black Sun, the Deep of Yggdrasil, the greater universal Hel, the Event Horizon, the Schwarzschild radius. Thus a connection with the Black Sun energy is a microcosm of the Odinic Journey of the Runes, a rebirth in miniature, that informs the soul, in ways not quite intelligible to one who has not experienced the connection, of the simple yet radical changes that must be taken so that all obstacles can be toppled.

Unlike the "light" of Kabbalists and Freemasons, who work only with the low-tone vibrations of material concepts and materialist symbology (tools, walls, enclosures, pillars, candles) which can easily be manipulated, the energies of the Runenmeister are beyond the material plane, beyond either extreme of enslavement to it or denial of it, on the very essence-level of movement behind matter and energy on a primal level. This is a high-tone vibration of the solar essence of resonance, and to master its use requires far less formality and far more intuition - far more Immanence, and this is not something which just any person can master. Indeed it ultimately requires going far outside the comfortable mainstream of "bliss-seeking" and navel-gazing which popular mysticism of various flavors has degenerated into. It often requires one to go against the herd, to risk controversy, to have the spark of desire to seize karma by the throat whenever possible, to burn with the craving not to be "at one with Odin", but rather, to become for oneself, as Odin is. It requires one to understand the cycles of Deep Time, and when necessary, to defy it. Only then can one be reborn greater in any desired sphere, and not merely meander about with one's mind already asleep and catatonic in Hel.

Thus, the Black Sun is the key to understanding not just the annual solar wheel, but the wheel of Time itself, from origin back to origin, or literally S'ur-T'ur, Zu Ur von Ur. Surtur, in the Armanic sense, is not the simple crude fire-giant that the Surt of late Icelandic lore was reduced to, but rather the Eldest of existences, the agent of change since before Gods and Giants began to be. Thus Surtur ruled Muspellheim and fired the cosmos with power before any giants, even Ymir, had life. Surtur is time itself - the march of the wheel of Time. Surtur, corresponding to Saturn in the Roman tradition and Zurvan in the Iranian (and oddly the German Zu Ur von Ur seems cognatistic with this) is the supreme deity of Time itself. From Time much can be learned, but it ultimately kills its students.

From Surtur much can be wrested, but only by racing against him; only by opposing the blind conformity of one's own Age can the deeper truths of life be discovered; only by standing against Time can one rise above one's own. Thus Freyr does not stand passively by as Surtr ages the worlds towards Ragnarok. Odin does not stand idle despite knowing what will happen. He still opposes the decline; for without augmenting the self and opposing entropy, how can one get a better result in the rebirth? What is the next incarnation worth, if the current one was neglected and thrown away? What happens in an age, when the people of the previous one let everything they inherited go to waste?

And yet in the end, as Guido von List reveals to us, Surtur is really the primal form of All-Father - not a demon, but a prime mover. Odin or Wotan is the personal manifestation of Allfather, whose source-state is Surtur. Though largely amoral and impersonal, Surtur is essential to the cosmos both as undercurrent and adversary. Meister von List elaborates:

"The oldest divine triad to be named is:
"Wuotan, Wili, We," later they are called "Wuotan,
Hoenir, Lodur," ... and in the Younger Edda they appear once as
"Har, Jafnhar, Thridi." Wuotan or Odin is always the First One and his name
remains unaltered, while the Second and Third change their names.
Even more telling is the third triad: "Har, Jafnhar, Thridi,"
which literally means: "the High One (Har = Ar = Sun, Right, the
High, etc,), the "Just-As-High," and the Turner (trie = to
turn [drehen], to wind, not "the third"). The Ases can only
shape the form of humanity, and only Wuotan provides humanity with
spirit, the human soul, while Hoenir conveys the lower soul or
intellect, and Lodur gives the material body. The name Wuotan or
Odhin (Od-in = spirit within), however, indicates that its bearer is
the most powerful of the three, and that he himself is actually the
One and Only. But this singular One is actually the second
manifestation of the divine spirit revealing itself through
materialization. He is the Second Logos, and as such he is the
"All-Father," who can be portrayed in a human form
superimposed over Wuotan, while he can also appear in human form as
Wuotan himself. All-Father, who is also called Surtur (the Dark-One,
not the Black-one), as his name indicates, is the All-creator and
Wuotan is his reflection in human form, and as such Wuotan is also
rightfully called the "All-Father -- for he is "One with
his Father in Heaven."

That which concerns the essence of the
Triad of Gods as such symbolizes the three stages: "coming into
being -- becoming -- and passing away (toward new arising)," and
this is expressed by all groups of names in all mythical triads."
- Guido von List, The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Folk: Esoteric and Exoteric (translated by Stephen Flowers, PhD)

Thus, the term "Black Sun" can be treated in a similar context; Schwarze Sonne, or Svart Sunna, is not literally black in color, but hidden, darkened, concealed. Surtur, for the Armanen, is the concealed primal form of All-Father, as Wotan is the personified, refined form. In times of breakdown and crisis, a conflict is forced between Surtur as "Father Time" and the conscious manifestation of All-Father as Wotan. This is not due to any hatred between the two forms, but rather the accumulation of regressive karma (en-karma) in the cosmos due to the chaotic aspect of the Od force overpowering the ordered form in the actions of beings - a classic "Kali-Yuga" paradigm. Wotan seeks to fight this process as long as possible, whereas Surtur, the unconscious and impersonal turn of the wheel of Time, has no qualms of pushing through it to its fruition; a brutal cosmic cleansing and rebirth. Thus he is a wider principle, beyond mere "good" and "evil", the inexorable gravitas of change between higher and lower states of complexity. Surtur does not change in the next cycle without Wotan, the active manifestation, pushing for a change in this one. Likewise, the Black Sun is the primal form of the solar principle, holding, as it does, an entire galaxy in its orbit, but the energy of the Black Sun can only be unlocked by ritual changes in one's actions. The yellow sun we know is only a temporal manifestation, as reflection of its power, one of many, just as Odin, Vili, Ve, Grimnir, Sigtyr, Hangatyr, Hroptatyr and so forth are multiple manifestations of the All-Father, in a means far more accessible to man than the primal mover of the Time-wheel, Surtur. The Arya-aware man is fully cognizant, at last, of the tendencies of Odin and Surtur present within himself as microcosm of Yggdrasil, the universe.

For all of that, the Black Sun is the illumination of the soul, the exposing of the lie of absolute peace and passivity, and the revelation of action in the cosmos, and interactions and indeed conflict between different karmas, different Wyrds, as the cause of all increase and manifestation. To manifest a reality, there must be passion and action. There must be the vortex, the inward flow, the concentration of will. There must be the Sonnenrad, in microcosm, in the man.

Most people never manifest a reality worth being proud of, even to their own minds.

Yet another ancient interpretation hints at the days of Ragnarok, the end of the current great cycle and the start of the next. The black sun in that sense is an actual phase of the cosmos in transition, and a time of both destruction and rebirth. This is attested in the Völuspá:

54.

Now valiant comes Valfather's
son,Vidar, to vie with Valdyr in battle,Plunges his sword
into the son of Hvedrung,Avenging his father with a fell thrust.

55.

Now the son of Hlodyn and Odin comesTo fight with Fenris; fiercest of warriorsHe mauls in
his rage all Midgard;Men in fear all flee their
homesteads;Nine paces back steps Bur's sonRetreats from the
worm of taunts unafraid.

56.

Now death is the portion of doomed
men,Red with blood the buildings of gods,The sun turns black
in the summer after,Winds whine. Well, would you know yet more?

57.

Earth sinks in the sea,the sun turns
black,Cast down from Heaven are the hot stars,Fumes reek,
into flames burst,The sky itself is scorched with fire.

58.

I see Earth rising a second timeOut
of the foam, fair and green;Down from the fells fish to
capture,Wings the eagle; waters flow.

59.

At ldavollr the Aesir meet:They
remember the Worm of Midgard,Ponder again the great
twilightAnd the ancient runes of the Ruler of Gods.

Ponder indeed. For only by plunging to the darkest depths of Yggdrasil were the runes gained. Only in the deepest void was their source found. And only in the Black Sun is there a symbol anywhere in the Runic paths that is both "void" and "source" in one. It is both the concentrator and dissipator of power. Both the attractor and the accelerator. Dark Matter draws together, Dark Energy scatters apart.

And so on.

The Wewelsburg Narrative

The second and perhaps more hyped-up story regarding the Sonnenrad is related to its significance as a floor mosaic in the Remaissance castle of Wewelsburg, a three-towered triangular fortress which was purchased and repaired by the NSDAP (more specifically the SS) from 1933 to 1943 at the direction of Heinrich Himmler. It is here that the story surrounding this symbol takes a sharp detour from the metaphysical to the downright insane.

Mainstream history tells us that Himmler restored the castle to be an occult center for his SS commanders, as sort of Camelot-Vatican hybrid for the 'black knights' of his planned SS warrior aristocracy to use as both a spiritual and political center. Mainstream history also tells us that Himmler invented the Black Sun symbol and ordered the installation of the Black Sun mosaic in the North Tower, that there were allegedly ancient "occult" pagan rites performed in the same room under Himmler's direction, that there were runes and runic shields everywhere on the property, and (paradoxically) that satanic "black masses", child sacrifices, and the entire litany of paranoid Christian Fundamentalist delusions from the "satanic panic" of the 1980s actually took place there. All this tall tale is missing is "Ilsa the She-Wolf" and a few of her faux-leather BDSM companions for maximum tabloid cheesiness.

The Black Sun mosaic (actually green) at Wewelsburg today. The castle is now a youth hostel, complete with Ikea bookcases and beanie pillows.

Mainstream history does not tell us the reality of Wewelsburg's reconstruction - that Himmler's original plans for the North Tower did not make any mention of the Black Sun floor mosaic. Mainstream history also does not mention that the Schwarze Sonne in various forms predates the Third Reich by thousands of years, and that even in its modern 12-spoked form, was already present on the Bismarck memorial in Hamburg in 1906, long before the National Socialist ideology (let alone the party) was even formed. Himmler never mentioned the Schwarze Sonne in official documents took no interest in the ruined North Tower, occult or otherwise, until 1935. We were not told that there is no actual evidence that Himmler had the mosaic installed, nor that its precise age is not even known! There is also no confirmed evidence that Himmler ever planned any sort of rituals in the North Tower beyond a remembrance ceremony for slain SS generals, and that would have been in the cellar crypt of the tower, several meters below the floor that contains the Black Sun mosaic. Mainstream history also does not provide any verifiable proof of the existence of any actual private SS rituals, apart from marriage ceremonies, which were purely secular affairs, with no mention of the Old Gods or anything distinctly "pagan" or "heathen" (unless one insists on taking an explicitly heathen meaning from terms like "blood and soil"). Likewise there is no evidence that anyone at Wewelsburg combined ancient Germanic rituals with "black masses" or "satanic" child murders, which historically were little more than paranoid fantasies of the Catholic Church, and later, various Protestant churches and had no connection to Germanic heathenry. We were lied to.

The Crypt at the North Tower - beneath the mosaic floor.

This false linkage of the Black Sun
to the National Socialist era (aside from the aforementioned delusional rumors and lurid tall tales) lies primarily due to Heinrich
Himmler's and his personal mystic Karl Maria Wiligut's misguided interest in Germanic Heathenish spiritualism, Wiligut's own personal quasi-runic magickal system, and their shared interest and usage of Wewelsburg. On
a side note, Wiligut had so little regard for traditional Germanic rune-masters that he personally abused Guido von List's Armanen rune
row, which was far older than Wiligut's and was far more influential
then, as it is also today - in favor of his own invented one. Wiligut also fabricated German history with a false conspiracy theory about Wotanism supposedly usurping Germanic religion from a fictitious "cult of Krist" which he invented, claiming "Christ" was actually a Germanic deity predating Odin/Wotan (never once considering that the roots of the name Vili-Ve-Wotan predate Germanic identity itself). He also cooked up impossible dates and timespans for his imagined ancient sect which do not merely stretch credulity - they snap it past the breaking point.

That said, the facts about Wewelsburg are interesting on their own merits. It is a rather unusual castle, being shaped as it is, and it is known that Himmler and some of his friends believed it to have ancient esoteric significance and to rest on an ancient site. Yet as it dates from the Renaissance or Late Medieval era, there is nothing to link it to Germany's Heathen past, and all its original decorations and inscriptions were Christian ones. Precisely why Himmler would have attached an occult significance to it, apart from scanty rumors of witch trials in the area in centuries past, is not well-understood. The mundane reality is that very little is known for sure about what Himmler actually planned for Wewelsburg; there isn't even a sense that the various occultists he was alleged to have employed besides Wiligut even agreed on what to do with the place, beyond using it as a meeting hall for senior SS officers - many of whom despised Wiligut. Rumors that Himmler believed the castle to be the original location of the Holy Grail, or that the 12 spokes of the Black Sun floor mosaic represented the 12 knights of King Arthur, are just that - rumors. We simply do not have many hard facts about this place, much less hard dates about the mosaic or other "occult" features in the tower.

Nevertheless, it is important to avoid the tendency for fanaticism. There is a pathological tendency on the part of many academics to censor free discussion of this period or to demonize any symbol that was associated even indirectly with it, with a blinding brain-fog of "political correctness" replacing conscious thinking about runic and quasi-runic symbolism. Even well-meaning academics are too quick to distance themselves from the Sonnenrad, the Swastika, various runes, and other Germanic symbols for fear of being called "racist" simply because the Third Reich adopted (I repeat, adopted) such symbols for its various internal organizations. Leaving aside whether 'racism' in the modern dog-whistle identitarian sense even had any place in the Reich (as opposed to racial idealism, the belief in the improvability of all races), the groupthink of mainstream academia has largely stopped any sort of rational discussion about the true meanings and merits of these spiritual symbols.

For that matter, even many things that were actual inventions of the Reich were not overall detrimental. The first enforceable animal rights and conservation laws, the first anti-smoking campaign, the first effective cancer treatments, the first regular use of x-ray machines in private clinics, and many of the first national workplace health and safety regulations we take for granted in the Western world, were enacted first by the "evil Nazis" in the Third Reich period. A great deal of technology we take for granted today, from synthetic motor oil to jet engines, was literally funded by the Reich, at a time when much of mainstream science dismissed it as unworkable. Scientists working in Germany had in many cases far more leeway to innovate radical new technologies (some of which we are still just beginning to understand) without fear of losing funding or public face to the arbitrary machinations of "industry consensus" (i.e. corporate collusion). A Werner von Braun, a Walter Horten, a Viktor Schauberger, or even a Heisenberg likely could not survive today in the parsimonious and gossip-enslaved conformist climate of today's western scientific institutions. It's time to grow out of the postwar groupthink and take the good with the bad from every era.

On a spiritual and anthropological level, it is also to be understood that despite the misinformation put out by some Reich organizations such as the Ahnenerbe, and despite the rather ironic suppression of German's own runic traditions under Wiligut, the general understanding of ancient cultures among German universities of the time was at a very high level. The achievements of Babylon, Persia, India, and even the obscure kingdoms of China's western regions, Khotan and Tibet, were more extensively researched by German archaeologists in the 1930s than any other nation. It also comes as a surprise to many people raised on a nonstop diet of Allied propaganda since childhood, that the Reich's official understanding of who is an Aryan, was far more inclusive than most of the race laws in America and Britain at the time. The same Fuhrer who was fingered as "the evil racist" by self-admitted apartheiders and eugenicists Roosevelt and Churchill turns out to be the same man who denounced colonialism throughout Mein Kampf, praised Reza Shah and the Persian Empire as founding Aryans, and offered citizenship to India's Subhas Chandra Bose as a fellow Aryan.

To His Imperial Majesty, Reza Shah
Pahlavi, Shahanshah of Iran – With the Best Wishes – Berlin, 12
March 1936

- Adolf Hitler

So an honest discussion of the Sonnenrad in the context of the Third Reich period will have to do away with all emotional rhetoric. There are some texts from "esoteric Hitlerist" circles after the war which deal with the understanding such groups had of the Sonnenrad. These materials are still obscure to most people, and of varying quality. Some may be based on ancient family traditions like those of the Armanen, others are the personal synthesis of powerful authors like Miguel Serrano, in which personal gnosis is difficult to separate from hidden traditions simply because of its author's potency as a writer, and yet others are pure speculation of the UFO/Aldebaran variety. Whether any of these beliefs can be traced for certain to actual Third Reich figures is uncertain at best, as we are speaking of "occult" i.e. secret knowledge that people would not have publicly admitted to believing in, particularly given the still-powerful influence of Christianity in the public opinion of the time.

However, a few basic concepts can be gleaned from the existing postwar sources.

1. The Black Sun in Reich-era mystic circles (not necessarily Reich-approved, just from the same time period) was viewed largely through an alchemical context. This means there was extensive reference to medieval and Renaissance grimoires regarding its position in the refinement of the human soul, which metaphorically was referred to as the transmutation of base metal to gold.

2. There was often reference made to Jung, in his understanding of the alchemical process as a psychological one of transformation. In this sense the Black Sun (though originally not represented by the Sonnenrad in alchemical texts) represents the first stage of awakening, the nigredo, in which you are forced to confront your "shadow aspects" or the uncomfortable truths about your own nature and past, before a conscious change in your life path can be made.

3. There was also input from non-European cultures in the Reich-era (and slightly earlier) Ariosophic circles about the Black Sun, ranging from ostensibly Aryan-influenced mythologies such as the Vedas, to seemingly unrelated Black Sun legends among the Mayans and Aztecs. This may seem odd given that we have been bombarded with so much Allied propaganda painting Ariosophy as morbidly racist, but the reality is that many Volkisch-spiritual organizations such as the Germanen-Orden, the Edda Society, as well as Thule and Vril, had a comprehensive knowledge of many ancient cultures and their mythologies, and a healthy respect for the Lore of solar cultures worldwide.

It also may have been a common belief in at least some of these circles, that every solar-centric culture around the planet was the successor to a society founded by a few Aryan migrants fleeing the destroyed Thule or Atlantis. It was no coincidence to the Volkisch mystics of the early 1900s that nearly all major solar cultures throughout history were also great farmers and great builders of stone monuments, nearly all of them circular or pyramidal, with the circles tracking the sun's motion and the pyramids representing its power. It was also no coincidence in their view that all such cultures also had a mirror image, the Black Sun, representing the forbidden connections of death and birth in the underworld unseen by human eyes - we see only the zenith of the Sun's progress, not the nadir.

In general these were the primary sources of Black Sun material in the 1920s and 1930s. There is little in the written Germanic lore that references the Black Sun. However a cyclical Indo-European understanding of the sunwheel as wheel of time was seen as important to Germanic mystics, and so this forms the fourth source of solar Lore:

4. The Germanic Lore (Eddas, Sagas, Nibelunglied, Beowulf, etc.) Here the Völuspá was considered the most important text due to actually mentioning a black sun, then the Hávamál, as its account of the Odinic Journey resembles the Aztec concept of the Black Sun in the underworld, transformatively. Where there were not obvious proofs for an Ariosophical concept in Germanic texts, German translations of ancient eastern Aryan texts such as the Avesta were consulted. The Vedas and the Mahabharata were also well-known in these circles, and it is alleged that Tibetan texts regarding the underworld were also studied.

In the first instance, there were plenty of old Renaissance-era texts to draw from. However these were taken in with a view towards purifying them of contradictory and (supposedly) kabbalistic material.

In a text ascribed to Marsilio Ficino
three suns are described: black, white, and red, corresponding to the
three most used alchemical color stages. “The body must be
dissolved in the subtlest middle air: The body is also dissolved by
its own heat and humidity; where the soul, the middle nature holds
the principality in the colour of blackness all in the glass: which
blackness of Nature the ancient Philosophers called the crows head,
or the black sun.”

The black sun is used to illuminate the
dissolution of the body, a blackening of matter, or putrefaction of the ignoble or impure husk in the brightly illuminated German grimoire Splendor Solis, and Johann Mylius’s Philosophia Reformata.

The Dark Sun page in Splendor Solis. Note the butterflies.

In the second view, Jungian archetypes were viewed as tools or keys to unlocking the inner states of man as defined by Aryan societies in the past.

In the third view, the Atlantean theory dominated. The Black Sun became a metaphor for a hidden knowledge or energy that had been lost, leading to the decline of man. In this context, the mythology of the Maya and Aztecs was seen as a far-removed dilution of an Atlantean solar culture brought to its shores by ancient Aryan explorers in much the same way as the Abgallu raised the Mesopotamians to a major world culture. In this, the Ariosophists found many parallels between Aryan mythology and at least a fraction portion of the New World mythologies.

The Black Sun in Mesoamerican mythology
has many mystical meanings, among them it is connected to the solar
god Quetzalcoatl and his penetration in the Underworld through the
west door after his daytime passage in the sky. For the Aztecs there
were two suns, the young Day Sun and the ancient Dark Sun, which is
unseen by the naked eye, but nonetheless is the greater of the two,
and exerts its pull on the Day Sun. Some scholars regard the
mythological Black Sun as a primal mother of all, it is both tomb and
womb. This way, it is the oneness that uniformly integrates
unawareness, death, and yet an expectation of fertility. This is
remarkably similar to both the Germanic cult of Nerthus as well as
our modern understanding of the galactic center.

Entrance to Nerthuz Entrance to Itzpapalotl

The Aztecs associated the passage of
the Black Sun, on its nightly journey through the underworld with the
image of a butterfly. The butterfly, in turn, is an archetypal symbol
of the transcendent soul (it was also seen as such in Germany for
centuries, hence its presence on Beethoven's grave long with
Jormundgandr/Ourboros), transformation and rebirth, and it was also
seen in the figure of the frightening earth goddess Itzpapalotl, the
"Obsidian Butterfly," that took souls during solar
eclipses, while the Aztec underworld was the eternal dwelling place
of the souls (i.e. Helheim).

According to the Codex Ríos, the
underworld was made of nine layers (the primal number of the cosmos
in Aryan mythology as well). The first level was the Earth's surface,
which also had the entrance that gave access to the other eight lower
levels.

The
connection with the Black Sun is also ascribed to the god
Tezcatlipoca, son of the primordial god Ometeotl who was a god of
dualities (which parallels Buri). Dark Tezcatlipoca, as he was known,
was one of the Five Suns of the creation myth of some Nahua peoples;
he was known as “Dark” because he was cloaked and rarely revealed
himself to people, and ruled over the north, winter, night, sorcery,
and judgment (parallels Odin/Vayu-Vata). Another interpretation holds
that the sun god Huitzilopochtli crossed the underworld during the
night bestowing “light” or new life to “lost” souls whose
names had been forgotten (again, parallels with the inhabitants of
Hel, and the steady cycle of reincarnation towards Valhalla in the
Armanen understanding of the Eddas). However, he demanded blood as
payment for his work (which parallels the practice of offering Blot
on behalf on ancestors). Before his nightly effort, Huitzilopochtli
was accompanied from zenith to setting by the Cihuapipiltins, the
souls of women who had died in childbirth, which then reappeared as
crepuscular moths on Earth (parallels moths being associated with
Odin as symbols for both ravens and Valkyries; a point which Tolkien
also made use of in the cloaked Gandalf imagery).

At archaeological scenes, the Plumed
Serpent shows a man beneath a black sun within a yellow sun. In this
manner the spinning of the sun and black sun shows a wheel crossing
with an obfuscatory motion where four black rays move out of four
yellow rays. According to some authors, these sets of four rays
relate to the four cardinal points and the four quarters, they
represent the governance held by the gods over the human race since
its infancy, as well as the annual rotation of the heavens,
and the universal rulership portrayed in the great dance called
"Mitotiliztli," which reproduces the appearance of a wheel.

Now where else have we seen a solar symbol with four rays rotating like a wheel?

Note the solar cross and feathered serpents in the Aztec version. On the right is an Anglo-Saxon brooch.

Triple this (clearly for the Armanic understanding of Arising, Being, and Passing towards New Arising) and you get...

... the twelve spinning rays of the Black Sun.

In the fourth instance, the Black Sun became emblematic of the Odinic Journey itself. For one must awaken to one's own inner darkness, to reshape into a being taking ownership of his destiny. The Black Sun is hence both a symbol of death and rebirth, for before every great transformation and ascendance, comes a great sacrifice, a great renunciation of what has been holding you back. This holds true for both an Armanist or a historical Runic approach, as well as for a modernist mystic one.

It is not a symbol for everyone, but the true reason for this is internal rather than external. Those who prefer a quick fix in life, or even believe that another can offer it, need not pursue this symbol. When fully implemented, it is the Singularity - the point of no return.

The question to be asked with this symbol, is: what do I have to sacrifice, to achieve those things I truly desire? What part of my old self do I have to sacrifice, myself to myself, so that a superior self can emerge unshackled? And what must I cast off forever in order to do so?